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Wednesday, June 11, 2014

SPOILERS: Batman Eternal #10

Five years ago, Carmine Falcone's reign over Gotham was coming to a close and well... yeah, Catwoman scratched his face. Duh. So now Carmine Falcone wants to pay her back, and does his whole bad guy speech, saying that he's what Gotham needs, a protector, to protect the city from the "animals," including the bat, who Falcone mentions he was told would be much harder to deal with, which Selina takes note of. But there's one more animal Falcone needs to deal with, an that's Pyg, who is storming the hotel Falcone is in, seeking revenge for his destroyed lab.

Elsewhere, Batman "dropped off" Julia at Wayne Manor, and everything's just sort of awkward. Despite her injuries, she's trying to leave, Bruce is all "you're father is a trained medic, if he says you're too hurt, you're too hurt," and Alfred is basically just like "uuuuuuuuhhhhh..." Good thing Jason shows up to break up the tension, allowing Bruce to give him a mission to follow Barbara to South America and make sure she doesn't get killed, believing her anger could get her in trouble.

Not long after that, Bruce sees the Pyg/Falcone hostage situation on the news, so it's time to go deal with that. Elsewhere, Cluemaster is asking his thugs if they really killed his daughter, which they believe they did, only for him to point out that someone has been posting stuff to the internet about "Gotham's latest threat." Sure enough, Steph has been spending her time in the library (all of it, as she hides there at night) with the mission to spoil her dad's plans.

Meanwhile, Pyg is all set to turn Falcone into a falcon hybrid man and Catwoman into a cat hybrid (he's SUPER creative) but Batman comes in, beats everyone up, gets away with Catwoman, while Bard delays sending the cops in on Forbes' orders by a couple seconds.

When Bruce and Selina get away, Bruce tells her he doesn't want her getting involved with Falcone, but she's well aware of Falcone's capabilities, and doesn't believe him to be as dangerous as he seems. She goes on to tell Bruce that Falcone let something slip, and it seems he's working under someone, so he might not be the bad guy. So with this new information, Bruce is forced to ask himself who the real threat is... who also just so happens to be watching from the shadows.

END.

NOTE: This isn't really part of the reveal, but there are two possibilities for the main bad guy, well at least there are only two in my opinion. The final line is "WHO?" in bold. Remember that time Lincoln March kept asking Bruce "who am I?" when he was trying to get Bruce to admit that he was his brother? Yeah. Buuuuuuuut, that might be a red herring. We see the silhouette of the guy watching Bruce, slanted white eyes, round head, seems to have quite the collar around him, much like that of a trench coat... Remember how Hush used to watch Bruce from afar? Uh huh.

That said, there's an owl on that thanksgiving teaser as well as a bowl of unwrapped bandages, so WHO KNOWS!?

The Good:

Eternal does what Eternal does best and progresses the main story quite a bit, confirming that there are bigger players at work and pushing Steph along slowly but surely, while continuing to set up various other plot lines like Babs in South America and Julia Pennyworth.

The Bad:

Not much really came from Falcone and Catwoman's past... all we got was that they came across each other five years ago and she left those scars, no real depth past that. Maybe there's more, god I hope there's more.

Dialogue was a bit rough in some spots, primarily stuff like Catwoman saying "adios loser." Really? Kind of cheesy. Also, Pyg once again sounded a bit too normal. Seeley nailed Pyg's crazy dialogue, but here, while there's a bit of craziness, it's just not quite there.

Art was a bit rough too, just seemed really stiff and lacking a sense of movement.

The Bottom Line:

Batman Eternal sets up a lot of things I'm excited to see play out, and one of those was what Catwoman and Falcone's past was... But this was the first time Eternal really disappointed me, and didn't really deliver anything of note. When Falcone was losing power, Selina stole a statue and scratched him... That's it. With that disappointment in mind, the rest of the issue was more or less set up for upcoming stories, so nothing really balanced out. I feel like this is the issue I've enjoyed the least so far, but the good thing is that the bar has already been set really high, so saying I enjoyed this the least doesn't actually mean it was that bad.

RATING: 3/5

2 comments
:

"Duuuuhhhh"indeed! The flashback about Falcone x Catwoman was a disappointment. Why not show just a little bit more about it instead of let us all thinking that Falcone is just a loser with a scar in the face?(... and Catwoman a girl with terrible speeches?!)

I don't know about the "who" villain, it really reminds me of Hush, but I think that will be weird use the character for the first time in the N 52 in this history. It seems that it's someone that we all know after the reboot... But I like him, hope that if really is him, the face behind the bandage has to cause a lot of trouble o/.

Villains are way easier to bring back into continuity than heroes are. They're the bad guys, not a whole lot to explain, meanwhile with heroes you have to go into their back story, why they're being a hero, etc. etc. So I don't think it'll be much of a problem.